anyone own or dealt with GBA bootlegs from hong kong?

[pragmatic insanester]

every time i search for Final Fight One, i get an assload of cheap carts from HK. i'm guessing these are all bootlegs, but the question is - does the game work well enough to justify a purchase?

[walrusmonger]

I'm sure the game works, but they say they might lose their save over time, or degrade. How much were you looking to spend, I have an import japanese Final Fight One in mint condition, and it's legit too.

[sharp]

every time i search for Final Fight One, i get an assload of cheap carts from HK. i'm guessing these are all bootlegs, but the question is - does the game work well enough to justify a purchase?

I would recommand you to get one from Europe. At least in the Netherlands you still have new copies for around 20 euro, and then you have a legit copy.

About the pirates I don't like them. Also once bought one in my own country to find out it was a bootleg. I had to visit the seller to force gim to pay me back the money and take back the bootleg. I had to take me phone to call to the anti-pirate organisation before he wanted to give me a refund. Bastard. The bootlegs are most of the time good quality when it comes to gameplay, but battery can be a problem. Also the boxes look cheap printed.

[esquire]

every time i search for Final Fight One, i get an assload of cheap carts from HK. i'm guessing these are all bootlegs, but the question is - does the game work well enough to justify a purchase?

I'm pretty sure there are a few places around here that still have this in stock for around $15 if you are interested.

[snes_collector]

After reading this I thought of something, has anyone ever saw a bootleg at EB and GameStop? And do you think they can tell it's a bootleg?

[pragmatic insanester]

it wasn't just FFO i was interested in. i'm just curious to how bootleg/pirates in general play. aside from the unliscensed NES carts, i don't have anything to fit the bill.

[Dimitri]

My friend has a bootleg Castlevania (second one, can't remember the name...) that plays and saves fine as far as I know. Haven't seen the box but the cart looks almost identical unless you look at the back...

About a month after he recieved it, eBay contacted him telling him not to complete the transaction. They're sure on top of things over there. :P

[MegaManFan]

I bought one of the Japanese-only Mr. Driller games for GBA from an overseas vendor thinking it was the real thing, then was kind of pissed that it ran slow on my GBA. A friend who bought the same game from the same seller suspected we had gotten Hong Kong frauds, and so he played a dump of the real cart (by flash cart I believe) and it ran at full speed. We got hosed Petey, we got hosed.

[phreak97]

After reading this I thought of something, has anyone ever saw a bootleg at EB and GameStop? And do you think they can tell it's a bootleg?

they cant most of the time, either that or they dont care.. i've seen pirates second hand a game stores before, i even told the manager, and he kinda didnt care..

i have heard of someone who buys pirate games off ebay then threatens the seller with being reported, pretending he didnt realize they were pirate till he got them. after getting his money back from the seller of the pirate carts, he takes the carts to his local second hand games dealer and trades them in as legit ones.. at the time i heard this, there was no ds, so gba games had a decent trade in price. if the game store said they were pirate, i think he took them to a store which doesnt specialize in games.

disclaimer: i am simply telling what i heard of someone else, this is not my idea, and i do not encourage this in any way at all.


Many pirate games play and save fine, but some dont. some of the pokemon games for example, doesnt work properly because the pirate carts dont have a real time clock, and many events in the game are controlled by that.
many games run off a basic cart with no extra clocks or anything, so the pirate versions will work fine. i have heard of pirate games which are meant to have a save feature but dont, because they made them ultra cheap and didnt include the circuitry for saving. dont know how common that is though. if you get one with a flat battery, the batteries can be replaced pretty easy.

[sleepycal]

Sometimes it can be hard to tell a pirate from an original. But not impossible.

Especially if it comes with a box. Its hard to describe, but there's just something different about the box. More of a slick feel to it. The manual will usually be front and back covers and just a few of the inside pages.

The cart itself generally has an identical casing. However, many are very sloppily put together. Look for open seams on the cart, etc. I received one where they didn't screw it all the way shut, so the head of the screw scratched the cart slot on my GBA. The label itself is usually more glossy. And there is no number stamped into it. If you look carefully at GBA carts, there are two digits imprinted into the label. Pirates I've seen don't have these.

I've never even thought about pirates at the game stores. But what you guys have mentioned makes sense. Its hard to tell them apart - unless the pirates decided to put a "boot" screen (like the old C64 days).

When I was in Hong Kong, the street vendors had tons of GBA boxed carts. All pirates. And all starting off at near $30 Cdn. Easy to bargain them down considering these things have virtually no overhead. Of course all I wanted was a multicart so I could play emulated NES games.

As for Final Fight One, I think these are still kicking around in game stores. I picked mine up on clearance probably around a year ago for $10.